1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and system for providing cross-platform remote control and monitoring of a facility access controller. The monitoring of the facility access controller includes detecting the status or monitoring of alarms operatively linked to a facility. The method and system employ a facility electronic access controller which is operatively linked to the world wide web. The method and system enable data transfer between facility electronic access controllers having different operating systems. The method and system also permit monitoring and control of the facility electronic access controllers by remote sites that employ web browsers to access web servers of the facility electronic access controllers.
2. Description of the Background Art
Facility electronic access controllers that are used for controlling and monitoring physical access of buildings, rooms, and restricted areas typically employ some form of identification means to verify the identity of a person before such person can pass through the controlled or restricted area. The identification means typically includes a coded card or other type of data bearing record which employs a specific coding to identify the user. Many facility electronic access controllers are designed to have built-in electronic processing intelligence, having the ability to store unique identified codes in digital form, and to determine who are allowed or not permitted to gain access to a controlled or restricted area.
Such facility electronic access controllers (FEACs) can be connected to one or more central computers where a set of application specific programs are installed. The FEAC and the central computers are linked via communication interfaces and communicate/interact through specific and predetermined protocols. Typically, a set of programs are installed on each central computer and are designed for a specific operating system platform to monitor transactions uploaded from a FEAC and also permit downloads of data to a FEAC. Typically, a central computer will control several FEAC of one building.
FEACs are typically used for monitoring of intrusion alarms within a building, or part of a building, rooms, restricted areas, etc. When an alarm is activated, the FEAC will generate audible and visual indicators locally within a building. In response to these indicators, a security guard who supervises the facility will take the appropriate action. If a facility or a building is not manned by a guard, the alarm signals will be transmitted automatically to a central PC. Alarm signals may also be transmitted a third party central alarm monitoring station, via an appropriate interface.
With the conventional art, installing application programs on each and every central computer of multiple buildings which can be networked together to allow users to operate one or many functions through the networked central computers is very difficult. Frequently, central computers of different buildings will also have different and incompatible operating systems. In the situation where one or more buildings having a plurality of central computers are networked together, any changes in the application programs or operating systems of each central computer would require changes to be made to each central computer individually so that the changes would be implemented to the entire network of central computers. Furthermore, the conventional art does not permit interaction between software of central computers which support different foreign languages due to different versions of operating systems on each central computer.
Accordingly, a need in the art exists for a method and system for providing cross-platform remote control and monitoring of facility electronic access controllers that have different operating systems. A further need exists in the art for a method and system for providing cross-platform remote control and monitoring of facility electronic access controllers (FEACs) which allows a single change or multiple changes in at least one of entry codes to the facility and operating parameters to be implemented into individual operating systems of central computers of facility electronic access controllers simultaneously.
Accordingly, it is a primary object of the present invention to provide a method and system for providing cross-platform remote control and monitoring of facility electronic access controllers. It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method and system for implementing changes with respect to facility access data and control for multiple central computers of facility electronic access controllers which may or may not have similar operating systems.
An additional object of the present invention is to provide a method and system for providing cross-platform remote control and monitoring of facility access controllers where the central computer of each facility electronic access controller includes a web server.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a method and system for providing cross-platform remote control and monitoring of facility electronic access controllers where each central computer of a facility electronic access controller can communicate with clients via industrial protocol using transmission control protocol over internet protocol (TCP/IP) and hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP).
A further object of the present invention is to provide a method and system for providing cross-platform remote control and monitoring of facility electronic access controllers where clients of the facility electronic access controllers employ any type of web browser program to access the FEAC while remote computers or remote central computers of a FEAC are able to monitor transaction activities of a restricted area from and within the web server and/or the FEAC. A client as used herein is defined as a computer system or process that requests a service of another computer system or process such as a server. A server is a program which provides some service to other (client) programs. The connection between client and server is normally by means of message passing, often over a network, and uses some protocol to encode the client""s requests and the server""s responses. A server may run continuously (as a daemon), waiting for requests to arrive or it may be invoked by some higher level daemon which controls a number of specific servers (xe2x80x9cinet-edxe2x80x9d on Unix). There are many servers associated with the Internet, such as those for Network File System, Network Information Service (NIS), Domain Name System (DNS), FTP, news, finger, Network Time Protocol.
An additional object of the present invention is to provide a method and system for providing cross-platform remote control and monitoring of facility access controllers where different central computers of FEACs running on different operating systems but which are connected in the same network (whether within a local area network or wide area network) to communicate with different central computers of FEAC.
A further object of the present invention is provide a method and system for providing cross-platform remote control and monitoring of facility electronic access controllers where web servers of facility electronic access controllers are designed using hypertext markup language (HTML) standards that support different languages.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a method and system for providing cross-platform remote control and monitoring of facility electronic access controllers where central computers of a FEAC act as simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) clients, allowing the central computer of a FEAC to send data, log, normal activity transactions, or security breach data, etc., to a remote user via the internet E-mail protocol. With such a method and system, specific or selected information can be transmitted by a computer of a FEAC based on program control. Further, with such a method and system, specific or selected access information or data can be sent to multiple users at multiple locations via an internet E-mail system.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method and system for providing cross-platform remote control and monitoring of facility access controllers where central computers running on different operating systems of FEAC can retrieve/access information or data with standard E-mail software.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a method and system for providing cross-platform remote control and monitoring of facility electronic access controllers where installation of identical software at each central computer of each FEAC is substantially eliminated. In other words, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method and system for providing cross-platform remote control and monitoring of facility electronic access controllers where the central computers of each FEAC may employ a different operating system with respect to a neighboring central computer of a neighboring FEAC and control can be achieved by a remote computer with a web browser program.
An additional object of the present invention is to provide a method and system for providing cross-platform remote control and monitoring of facility intrusion alarm monitoring functions, whereby the same remote computer or computers acting as web clients can monitor alarms which detect facility or building penetration conditions via the internet.
An additional object of the present invention is to provide a method and system for providing cross-platform remote control and monitoring of facility electronic access controllers where access data of the monitoring of restricted areas is provided to a remote computer or a central computer of a FEAC in real time. Such access data of restricted areas can include, but is not limited to, displaying cardholder identified codes, results of biometric scans, device names, location descriptions, and system database and FEAC in real time. Other access data includes displaying graphical images and dynamic status information on web pages and retrieving such information with web browsers of a remote computer or a central computer of a FEAC.
These and other objects of the present invention are fulfilled by providing a method for providing cross-platform remote control and monitoring of a facility electronic access controller, the method comprising the steps of: monitoring an input access control device with the facility electronic access controller; receiving first identification data with the facility electronic access controller from an input access control device; comparing second identification data stored in the facility input access controller with the first identification data; activating an output access control device of the facility electronic access controller if the first identification data matches the second identification data; generating at least one of time data and location data with the facility access controller in response to the first identification data; and transferring the first identification data and at least one of the time data and the location data with the facility electronic access controller over a cross-platform network to a remote computer.
In addition, these and other objects of the present invention are also accomplished by a system for providing cross-platform remote control and monitoring of a facility electronic access controller, the system comprising: a facility electronic access controller including: a CPU; a non-volatile memory; at least one of a network port and a cross-platform port; an input/output interface; an input access control device operatively linked to the interface, the input access control device generating identification data of a user; an output access control device operatively linked to the interface; a cross-platform network; and a remote computer operatively linked to the facility access controller by the cross-platform network, whereby the cross-platform network enables remote operation of the facility electronic access controller irrespective of compatibility between an operating system of the remote computer and an operating system of the facility access controller.
Additionally, these and other objects of the present invention are also accomplished by A computer program product for providing cross-platform remote control and monitoring of a facility electronic access controller, the computer program product comprising: a computer useable medium having computer readable code embodied therein, the computer readable code including a controller operating system computer readable program code device, the controller operating system computer program code device further includes: an access control system computer readable program code module which monitors output and input access control data of a facility; a TCP/IP computer readable program code module; and at least one of an internet server computer readable program code module and a mail client computer readable program module, whereby the controller operating system computer readable program code device enables remote operation of the facility electronic access controller irrespective of compatibility between an operating system of a remote computer and the controller operating system computer readable code device of the facility access controller.
Further scope of applicability of the present invention will become apparent from the detailed description given hereinafter. However, it should be understood that the detailed description and specific examples, while indicating preferred embodiments of the invention, are given by way of illustration only, since various changes and modifications within the spirit and scope of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from this detailed description.